The Howard League for Penal Reform

Imprisoning charities

Yesterday morning I had a fascinating meeting with the Charity Commission about whether charities should manage prisons.  I went with Kevin Curley and others from NAVCA and met with Suzi Leather and her team.  We sought the meeting because we are concerned that two charities, Turning Point and Catch 22, have joined with Serco to form a consortium and are bidding to build and manage new prisons.

Our argument is that the infliction of punishment cannot be a charitable activity and that the main purpose of a prison is punishment.  Whilst we support charities delivering rehabilitative services under contract inside prisons, it is a whole different ball game when they join a consortium to manage a jail.

The government has set out its vision of an expanded prison estate to accommodate 96,000 men, women and children and that all new prisons will be financed, built and managed by private companies and the third sector.  The government does not even pay lip service to the concept of independence of charities but sees them merely as a way of achieving a burgeoning prison estate without the taxpayer having to pay the initial capital costs up front.  Privatisation of expensive capital spend allows the government to do it “off balance sheet” which is basically building prisons on a mortgage.  Contracts would be up to 40 years – a hugely long time to tie a charity into a service and very seductive to a sector that is used to short term agreements.

The problem is that charities could be involved in deciding policy on punishments inside the prison.  I can imagine the conversation at a management board – “should we stop people from having exercise or family visits as a punishment for swearing at a prison officer?”  “What about not allowing them a radio when they are in solitary confinement after the second week?”.  Prisons a complex regulatory structure but within that they have discretion to invent their own incentives and punishment systems.

Charities would have a financial incentive to deliver the contract as they would share the profits.  They could also share the fines imposed for failing to deliver on the contract.  The private sector has not been particularly innovative because they operate on tight margins and the profit imperative rules, so charities involved in this structure would be inhibited from experimentation and improving practice.

Interestingly it has proved impossible to get hold of the contracts and even the charities involved have not been transparent about what their relationship and arrangements are. The private sector plays hardball and would not allow their more benevolent partners to reveal anything that could affect their reputation or profits.

A story to illustrate this.  I am to take part in BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions this week, which was due to be held in a Serco prison.  When they heard I was on the panel, Serco withdrew the invitation to the BBC to host the programme.  Why didn’t they want me to see the prison?  What have they got to hide?

Back to the Charity Commission.  It has decided to do some fact finding so it has a better understanding of the issues.  I am very pleased with that outcome.  We are going to meet again.

I strongly believe it is both immoral and impractical for charities to be involved in the management of prisons.  If we let this happen, it could change the very nature of charities and mislead the public as to what a prison is, for generations to come.

February 3, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Government policy, Prisons, Public Services, Rehabilitation, Uncategorized  6 Comments

Too many initiatives and not enough resources for young people.

I spent Friday night with the Stay Safe programme in Salford. The local authority, police and youth offending service have staff who tour the streets of Salford every Friday night from 6pm until midnight in a marked police car and an unmarked car to find children and teenagers on the streets. I arranged my participation through Mike Ormrod of the youth offending service, as we have been working with them on the Local Government Association partnership to develop good practice to keep children out of prison. Salford YOS has done some great work in children’s homes supporting staff so that when there is an altercation the staff do not resort to calling the police which has resulted in a drop in the criminalisation of children in care.

The shock for me was how many young people we found just hanging around, in the freezing cold. We must have stopped to talk to at least 100 young people over the evening, in groups of 5 to 30. They were all polite, friendly, charming, funny and bored out of their minds. Only a couple were smoking (cigarettes) and I didn’t see any drinking. These were lovely young people with nothing to do but hang around in the cold in parks, on swings and on street corners. They were simply standing and chatting to each other. 

There was apparently one incident with a broken window when a lad had kicked a football. This ended up with the police filing a report, but could easily have been resolved informally with the young man being asked to apologise and pay for the damage to be repaired.

But my real concern was for the welfare of these young people. They said all they wanted was a warm room, a sofa and some music for dancing. 

I understand that the department for children, schools and families is funding the Stay Safe initiative, and that it is costing almost £200,000. Couldn’t that money be spent on providing somewhere for these young people to go for a few hours on a Friday night?

It reminds me of the research we conducted a few years ago on preventing rural crime by young people. A parish council in the South West was concerned that teenagers were hanging around the bus stop in the evening, so instead of providing them with something to do, the council installed CCTV.

We have too many initiatives, too many corrections, too many punitive and control measures, and not enough resources for young people. Goodness, they are not asking for much or anything expensive. 

I came away heartened by my encounters with Salford young people. One lad said “thank you for your concern” as I left, and I think he was only partially being ironic.

February 1, 2010   Posted in: Children and young people, Government policy  No Comments

No fantasyland

The prisons inspectorate is publishing its inspection of a unit inside a prison that holds young girls - the Rivendell (yes, land of the elves) unit inside New Hall prison today.

Whilst the report is broadly favourable, it should be seen in the context of prisons being totally the wrong environment for young girls. The Howard League ran a vigorous campaign to get young girls dealt with effectively outside the prison system and exacted a promise that this would happen from the then home secretary. David Blunkett then came along and reneged on this, instead pumping millions into building expensive new units inside women’s prisons for girls. One of them has already been closed down.

I visited New Hall prison not that long ago. I went because we were deeply concerned at the suicides of women prisons over the past few years and because we have secured a public inquiry into the treatment of a young girl who had been held in New Hall when she was suicidal and her treatment was brutal. I was shocked to see that the prison environment is almost like a high security jail, despite it holding women, with razor wire and high concrete walls not just round the perimeter but also through the prison. The unit for juvenile girls was separate, but I didn’t see much activity and felt a rather desultory atmosphere. I am sure they are doing their best, but the point remains that children should not be in prison.

January 29, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Inside prisons, Prisons  No Comments

Another announcement about victims

Jack Straw has announced a new national victims’ service. It won’t be a statutory service, but a sort of unit with a paltry £8 million funding. This comes seven years after legislation was passed to set up a commissioner for victims office. This has not happened, despite being announced several times, until Sara Payne was asked to do something but without the office, the pay or the status provided by resources. Now we are getting another announcement about victims, just before the election, which seems to be an amazing coincidence.

I have many criticisms of the proposals. The rhetoric is damaging as it creates a false distinction between victims and offenders, whereas the reality is more complex. Of course there are completely innocent victims and people who commit horrendous crimes because they have made a rational choice. But very often the event is more complicated and people who commit crimes are badly damaged, mentally ill, addicted, drunk, or are part of the family. Ignoring this complexity and pretending that there are two completely distinct races, the good and the bad, results in irrelevant and inappropriate responses to offenders and also misleads victims.

The Howard League has been suggesting for years that the criminal justice system should be re-focussed as a victims justice system, based around a model that would uphold the rule of law but whose objective would be to solve the problem and heal the damage done by the crime. Rather than exploiting victims in the run up to elections by using them to increase punishments, victims’ needs should be central to the system. But this would also involve the not so innocent victims, as addressing their needs and seeking to heal them would help to prevent repetition.

We have also suggested a recasting of the probation service as a “resolution” service. This would provide a wide ranging service to the community to resolve disputes before they become anti-social behaviour or crime. This would work to prevent people becoming victims. It would provide a neighbourhood conflict resolution service from noise pollution to fly tipping, children misbehaving to parking problems. 

There have been far too many small changes to the system that often have the opposite effect to that intended. I was talking to a former high court judge when we both emerged from hearing Jack Straw’s lecture this morning. He told me that the victim surcharge of £15 imposed on fines had drastically reduced the use of fines in the crown court – how can a judge impose a £250,000 fine on a white collar criminal and then announce in open court that he had to impose a £15 victims’ surcharge, it looks like an insult. Also, the parole board is going to be asked to assess how remorseful a prisoner is before they can be released – that is a pretty tricky ask, particularly for example with domestic violence where the pattern is one of remorse and violence, remorse and violence.

Too many simplistic announcements with too little real thought makes for muddle and mistakes.

January 27, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Government policy, Victims  No Comments

First past the post and excessive use of prison

I am about to change my mind. For years I have been a supporter of first past the post voting systems, mainly because of the constituency link. But the evidence, particularly from my professional life, is pushing me toward the conclusion that that very pillar of our democratic system is contributing towards an excessive use of prison. Also, it clogs up the political system with social work issues.

I have to declare an interest straight away. I was an elected councillor for eight years and every week the three of us took it in turns to hold an advice surgery. I was told at the time that we three had the highest majority of any councillors, of any party, in London, as it was something over 3,000 votes. So I do know a bit about elected politics and local democracy.

One of the problems has been this very close link to local people. Almost all MPs and councillors will hold regular advice surgeries, but no one claims that the people who come for help are in any way representative of the local community. Older people are disproportionately involved, whereas children never come to ask for help or to complain. So it is that children are identified as the problem when there is anti-social behaviour. As politicians pay huge attention and give importance to their surgery caseload, the relentless complaining about children and young people has a toxic effect on attitudes and hence on policy.

Crime and anti-social behaviour is one of the issues most complained about, particularly in areas with poverty and social housing. This weights the issue on the political agenda. I cannot think of a single person who came to my surgery to complain about big corporate corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. People complain about what they can see and understand. The idea that corporate corruption and white collar crime might be far more corrosive on the fabric of society that a few kids kicking a ball against their wall is too far away.

Since 1997 when an additional hundred or so Labour MPs were elected who clearly were not going to be ministers, they worked assiduously in their constituencies, holding regular surgeries and listening to hundreds of (older) people complaining about relatively trivial events.

The response has been ever more punitive legislation particularly focussed on young people and a dramatically rising prison population. I am not saying that this is the only reason for the political obsession with low level crime and the use of prison, but it has certainly contributed.

My second reason for a possible support for proportional representation were some visits I made recently to countries that have low prison populations. It was pointed out by Tapio Lappi-Seppälä from Finland, that countries that have political systems based on conflict with the two party system tend to have crime and justice as a hot topic that is exploited by parties, whereas countries that have a more consensual voting system do not. So, Italy, which has had right wing governments for decades has a relatively low prison population, as does Germany and Finland. But UK and USA use prison as a political weapon. There are other indicators, but this is one of the key determinants for prison populations.

So, when I read Polly Toynbee’s article in today’s Guardian, I could feel myself slipping onto the PR bandwagon after a lifetime of bingeing on first past the post.

January 26, 2010  Tags:   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

John Redwood on prison reform

I notice that John Redwood has suggested that burglars and car thieves should not be sent to prison but should pay compensation instead and that this would do more to help victims and achieve the government’s target of reducing prison costs. He makes the argument that victims are doubly victimised by having to pay the costs of imprisonment, and get no benefit from it.

I was randomly looking through parliamentary answers after having read his blog, and a PQ from 25 November seems to reinforce what John Redwood is saying and links to something that Dominic Grieve pointed out in his speech to our AGM. Almost half of the people sentenced to prison every year have already served three or more prison sentences. This is a slightly different way of looking at familiar statistics that show how many people are reconvicted of yet another crime after being released from prison, which we all know is more than two thirds.

So not only do I get my house burgled, my car vandalised, my handbag stolen, assaulted in the street and bag snatched, but I don’t get any compensation and I have to pay through my taxes for a failing prison system that pretty much pushes my own personal criminal into doing it again. And again.

John Redwood is right, we need a radically different system that puts the victim at the heart of the system, not by ratcheting up irrelevant punishments but by offering support and compensation and recognition of hurt. Restitution benefits the individual victim and the whole of our community.

January 25, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: Sentencing  2 Comments

Some of today’s papers

Some of today’s papers have had a fit of over enthusiasm in attributing the prison ship story and I want to put the record straight.  Last week’s seminar in Oxford was a lively and robust discussion with students and Alan Duncan stuck to his party line – whilst using flavourful language as you would expect of a charismatic politician.

The prison ship story came the next day from different sources and should not be conflated with the seminar.

The Conservative justice front bench have spent considerable effort developing thoughtful and carefully constructed policies over the last three years.  We don’t agree with them all but are happy to work with them on serious ideas for dealing with overcrowding in prisons and crime reduction.

January 23, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  3 Comments

Crime and security bill

Two things today related to the crime and security bill currently going through Parliament.

On Monday this week clause 41 of the crime and security bill sailed through the house of commons virtually unopposed. Just over a week since the bi-partisan justice select committee had stated plainly:

“Prison is a relatively ineffective way of reducing crime for other than serious offenders who need to be physically contained for the protection of the public.  For others, prison is a very expensive way of dispensing justice and seeking reform.â€

Also the committee called upon the government, ‘to make more radical decisions, and investments, putting the system on a sustainable footing over the longer term by shifting resources away from incarceration towards rehabilitation and prehabilitation’.

It is odd that MPs of all parties can group together and call for a reduction in the prison population one week and then the next week vote for a measure that will result in an extra two years in custody for people currently in prison.

Just to be clear, this new law is not a ban on mobile phones for prisoners. The government already has this; it is done through prison internal rules, the prison service orders. There is also already a ban on prison officers bringing mobile phones into prisons. This new law is redundant; prison officers already have the power to confiscate mobile phones and prevent their use. If the government wants to see improvement in this area they should invest in it properly not legislate to persecute society’s most vulnerable while deepening the crisis of the prison population.

The crime and security bill will also increase police powers to retain DNA and fingerprint evidence. The Howard League opposes these measures in the bill, particularly as they will allow the police to hold the DNA evidence of a child for prolonged periods.

Earlier this week, the home affairs select committee heard interesting evidence from two witnesses on this matter. One who recounted supporting an environmental protestor cordoned off by the police by throwing him a bottle of water. The bottle landed on the ground and the police arrested the young man for littering. They retained his DNA for close to a year.

The second witness recounted how his 70 year old mother, with arthritis in her hands, had her data taken upon the murder of his uncle. Despite the fact that the old lady was physically incapable of holding the murder weapon the police had taken the time to add her to their list of the suspected criminal underworld.

January 21, 2010  Tags: , ,   Posted in: Government policy, Police  One Comment

A new face at the top

Phil Wheatley, director general of the national offender management service (NOMS), has announced he is to retire later this year.  I wish him well in his retirement.

This offers a tremendous opportunity for change in the criminal justice system.  A new person at the top could inject some energy into a programme of reform based on the ideas enshrined in last week’s justice select committee report on justice reinvestment and the Howard League’s own report drawn up by the Commission on English Prisons Today last year.   The overarching conclusion of these recent inquiries, and several others, is that the current trajectory of ever-increasing prison numbers is simply unsustainable.

Prison numbers have almost doubled since the mid-1990s.  The overall costs of the criminal justice system has risen from 2% of GDP to 2.5% over the last 10 years. That is a higher per capita level than the US or any EU country.  At the same time, the justice select committee has calculated that the probation budget has declined in real terms by 14.8% between 2002 and 2008.

Prison numbers are projected to continue rising, while at the same time the economic crisis means that the Ministry of Justice is expected to make £1.3 billion in savings by 2012.  New prisons are being built using the private finance initiative, which effectively racks up further public sector debt over the years to come – hardly prudent given the debt we have already amassed in bailing out the banks.  Whether it is in these fantasy figures or down on the ground, in tension-ridden and overcrowded prisons, something is surely going to give.

What do we require then from Phil Wheatley’s successor?  We have argued that the probation service needs a public champion.  Someone who will fight for the historic values of a service that has a track record of success at working with people with multiple challenges.

We also need someone who will take part in public debate about the role of the criminal justice and penal systems, a champion for reform, and someone who will stand up to ministers.  Obviously they have to be a competent manager, but the most important element of the job is the ability to guide a shared vision for the future – this is not just an operational post.  I hope the new director general of NOMS has a strong commitment to the contribution that community sentences can play and is someone keen to work with local government and the health sector.

January 18, 2010  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Government policy, Prisons, Public Services  One Comment

The naked rambler

The naked rambler, Stephen Gough, could spend the rest of his life in prison, in Scotland. Interesting that the English have decided that action should not be taken through the criminal justice system, but the Scots are pursuing him relentlessly. After spending a year in Perth prison, the police were waiting for him on his release and re-arrested him. 

This is bizarre on many levels. The Scots have a worse problem with prison over-crowding than even the English. There are more than 8,000 people held in Scottish prisons, taking it to the top of the European imprisonment table. For every 100,000 of the population in Scotland, 157 are in prison at any one time.  That is double the rate of our near neighbours France, Germany or Italy. And this is at a time of an all time low in crime rates in Scotland.

The Scottish government has given lead in a public discourse focusing on reducing the use of prison and has ambitious targets to reduce the unnecessary use of prison custody, so the imprisonment of a man for being naked flies in the face of common sense.

Is the Scottish criminal justice system riven with prudishness and sex-obsessed?  I heard a crazy discussion on Radio 2 with a female journalist implying that the naked rambler was akin to a paedophile and rapist.  But there is nothing remotely sexual about his nakedness; quite the contrary. He is just nude. Get over it. Who cares. He should not be in prison, in Scotland or in England.

January 15, 2010   Posted in: Sentencing, Uncategorized  No Comments